And then you were dancing

Climbing up the last two rungs, you pull yourself off the ladder and onto the dusty attic floor. You breathe in the smell of warm light and old maple wood as you look around the sunbathed space, letting your eyes linger on the precarious piles of books, their crackling pages adding a homey, soothing musk, and the old green velvet couch next to a large window with widely spaced iron cross hairs intersecting the original bubbly glass from the eighteen hundreds. Brightness falls in lazy waves of dusty gold as the afternoon and a feeling of an older time seep in around the edges of the room. As you close your eyes, you luxuriate in the feeling of the world as it was not so very long ago; a simpler, seemingly more surreal place that had softer edges and more time to walk in gardens, flirtatiously courting gentlemen with your parasol in one hand. "I thought I told you four." There is your gentleman now. You snap forward, spinning on your heel and turning to face him. You can never quite get over how beautiful he looks just then, with sunlight caught in his hair and his eyes reflecting the pale gold serenity of the afternoon. Perhaps he can see the reminiscent tint to your eyes, or perhaps he’s just being himself, but he takes your hand, kissing the top and bowing formally to you. "Would you care to dance?" You suppress the silly giggle that you were tempted to let shatter the bliss and preform what you think will suffice as a curtsy, and then put your right hand in his outstretched one as he rest one of his on your waist. You twine you fingers with his as you start to dance. It begins fast and stiff, a clipped four stepping waltz, but slowly it evolves something languid and wonderful with lots of twirls and dips and standing on his feet because you’re dancing so close. It ends when he guides you over to the couch, laying down against you and watching the way the light beams fizz up abruptly with their parallel golden strands as dust rises from the emerald velvet each time either of you moves.

Subscribe

Get Teen Ink’s 48-page monthly print edition. Written by teens since 1989.